


quarter past midnight

by written_you_down



Series: nostalgic. [7]
Category: Bastille (Band)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25145272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/written_you_down/pseuds/written_you_down
Summary: Dan writes a song.
Relationships: Kyle Simmons/Dan Smith
Series: nostalgic. [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754833
Comments: 16
Kudos: 31





	quarter past midnight

Before Kyle had even disappeared from his sight, Dan regretted letting him go. 

Dan stood alone in the alley for a moment more, his mind reeling. For the first time in a long while, he felt loss. He felt as though Kyle was well and truly gone. 

Dan didn’t even consider going back into the pub to see the others. He could not imagine having a normal conversation with anyone, couldn’t imagine pretending that everything was fine. It felt as if everything had fallen apart around him and he couldn’t act otherwise. Dan turned and began the short walk back to Jack’s. He knew he’d have the studio to himself. 

A few minutes later he arrived at the door and he locked himself in for the night. Dan tossed his keys on a table and out of habit, reached for the battered notebook he kept in his backpack. He was restless, his mind scattered in bits and pieces as he combed through the speech, no, the damn manifesto Kyle had dropped on him earlier. It still smarted, still stung. Dan had never actually been struck in the face before but he imagined it felt the same as Kyle’s words did coming at him. Words that were rapid fire and so fucking full of the truth that Dan was left speechless. Unable to vocalize anything at all, at the worst time imaginable… at a time when Kyle all but pled with Dan to just speak. 

Kyle had wanted the truth from him. And what had Dan said in response? What had he done? Nothing. Dan had stood there, unable to free the words that were tangled in his mind. Everything he felt about Kyle was tied in a giant messy knot. The strands that Dan could identify were not things he ever thought he could say to Kyle. The consequences of doing so seemed far beyond anything he could walk back. So when faced with it tonight, Dan couldn’t do it. He couldn’t immediately present his most private thoughts and hand them over on a platter to Kyle. 

Instead, he had stood in silence, guilty of all the accusations that Kyle had thrown at him. Kyle was right, Dan _didn’t_ know what he had. Because it was only now that Dan realized that Kyle had been his — that Kyle had been his the entire time. Dan can hardly process that thought. Part of him, mostly the part that resided inside in his chest was wild with something that could only be called joy. But the part of Dan that had always been the most troublesome, the bit behind his eyes, the bit inside of his head was devastated. The more he considered it, the more he was certain that he had fucked everything up beyond repair. The idea was terrifying — so much in his life was tied up with Kyle. The highs, the lows…Kyle had been there for all of it. 

It wasn’t as if Dan had just had some bloody epiphany. It wasn’t as if all of a sudden, he just realized that he loved Kyle.

He had always fucking loved Kyle. Far more than he should have. Far more than was appropriate for a friend. In all the time Dan had known Kyle, he had worked so diligently to conceal how much he cared for him, that when asked to actually display it, he couldn’t. He had almost brought Kyle to tears.

Dan slumped down onto the couch, notebook and pen beside him and glanced around the studio space that he owned with Mark. It was still fucking mad to him that he owned a studio. It seemed as if they had just signed their record deal. Dan thought back to the night after they signed the contract. Admittedly his memories were hazy due to the massive amount of celebratory drinking he did at the time, but he had a clear memory of talking to Kyle outside the last pub. Dan wanted the night to never end, he remembered telling Kyle of how he wanted to avoid tomorrow. He could still hear Kyle promising to help him remember the best parts, to help Dan piece the night back together. 

Dan opened his notebook, clicked the pen and started to write. 

Kyle was there at every turn. Dan could see him, sitting on the curb alone after being tossed from Glastonbury. Kyle who honestly had every right to be cross with Dan that night, but still leaned against him when Dan sat beside him. Still running high from their set and Kyle’s weight pressed against his own had made Dan bold. Made him actually verbalize how he felt instead of burying it. “This is my favorite part,” he had told Kyle quietly. And god. He had meant it. 

Dan scribbled it down quickly, then rested his head against his forearm.

He thought of a gig years ago — one that he wished had never happened at all. He remembered leaning his head against the window of their shitty van. Remembered wanting to give up. And there was Kyle again. By his side. Doing his best to find a silver lining. Convincing Dan to get back up again, to walk away from the wreckage of the night… to leave this place in dust. 

Dan flipped to the next page and wrote. 

That same night. Kyle telling him in a round-a-bout Kyle sort of way that he loved him. _Who else would I love?_ Not an outward declaration, Kyle wasn’t trying to distract him from the very real anxieties Dan was fighting, Kyle was just trying to let Dan know that he wasn’t alone. Even when Dan fucked things up, Kyle still supported him, still loved him. Christ. It had been right there in front of him and that was ages ago. Dan thought back to how he felt sitting next to Kyle, singing Joy Division. Only minutes before Dan had never wanted to hear himself sing again and there he fucking was singing and laughing alongside Kyle. Instead of hiding what he felt, Dan reached over and took Kyle’s hand. Kyle had gripped his hand right back. 

Dan wrote. 

He thought of New York City, late Saturday, early Sunday, a hazy time that was somehow both days at the same time. Of how cold it was. Of how relieved he was to have that performance behind him. To have played on camera in front of so many people and survived it. To still be standing on the other side of it. He remembered how he ran through red lights with Kyle laughing in disbelief right by his side. Dan remembered feeling like anything was possible on a night like that and so he had worked up the nerve to do the very thing he had always wanted to do. He remembered kissing Kyle for the first time and Kyle kissing him right back. God. How could he ever have convinced himself to live a life without having a million more moments with Kyle like that one? 

Dan wrote.

Dan thought of the night Kyle broke his elbow. The night Kyle lost his memories to pain meds. Dan remembered it. He remembered all of it. Dan got up to fetch his laptop and opened it to the file he had begun on the morning after. When he attempted to find the words to describe a night that had never left his brain. It was like a movie full of flashbacks that played on loop of what he could have had, had he only been braver. Had he only spoken. That morning, Dan was too wrecked to make his case. To give Kyle a list of all the reasons they could make something like this work. 

While it was true Dan was still a disaster and was still the same idiot he had always been, Dan knew that he had to try. He couldn’t let Kyle walk away not knowing how he felt. Dan was unraveling the knot, unraveling himself tonight. He was going to lay all of it out to Kyle. It would be entirely up to Kyle what happened next. But for once, for fucking finally once, Dan was speaking up. 

He picked up the book full of the strands of his thoughts, of his memories, of his stupid fucking heart and sat in front of the piano.

And Dan wrote through the night. 

—

Dan heard the door shut and the lock click into place and knew that Kyle had arrived. Dan felt a rush of gratitude that Kyle had shown up after the way they had left things. He stood and moved towards Kyle, hoping that he can salvage the mess he had made. It was Kyle who spoke first once he had taken in Dan’s current state. “You’re still wearing the same thing you had on yesterday…. have you been here all night?”

“I came straight from the pub. I needed to work through some things.” Dan pulled his phone out from his pocket and glanced at it, quickly searching for something.

“Dan,” Kyle sighed in irritation. “Did you call me over here to watch you with your phone? I’ve got to say, I’ve had my fill of—“

“Wait. No, no,” Dan interrupted. “I need to send you something. I just need to find it. Right, ok, I’m sending it now. Please accept it.” He watched as Kyle grudgingly got his phone out and unlocked it.

“So you’ve sent some sort of gigantic album titled K.” 

Dan went to fetch a glass of water that he had left near the piano. He grabbed it and faced Kyle. “Did you accept it? It’s on your phone now?”

“Jesus man. Yes. What’s the bloody—“ Kyle stopped mid sentence. He watched as Dan casually dropped his phone into the glass of water. It sank to the bottom and then slowly rose to float to the surface. “What are…”

Dan shrugged. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I don’t give a fuck about my phone. The only thing I cared about saving I just sent to you.”

“I’m pretty certain that it’s water proof.”

“Really?” Dan fished it out of the water. Kyle was right. The piece of shit phone still worked. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve destroyed so many of these things doing far far less.” He shook the liquid from it and then chucked it across the room. They both watched as the phone hit the wall with a loud thwack and then bounced to the floor. 

Kyle watched Dan retrieve it and then smothered a smile as Dan began mumbling a steady stream of swears upon finding it intact. Dan looked frantically around the room, his eyes settling on the bench in front of the piano. He moved to it, lifted it and placed the phone under one of the legs before bringing the bench forcefully on top of the phone. It shattered under the impact. Dan sat at the piano and looked down at the mess. “Fucking bionic phone,” he muttered.

While Kyle was amused at whatever the hell Dan was going on about, he wasn’t ready to laugh with Dan yet. The events from the previous day still hurt and Kyle had no reason to believe his situation with Dan had improved. It was then that he thought to open the file that Dan had sent him. Kyle closed his eyes and took a breath. When he opened them again, he noticed the photo that was displayed on his screen. It was of the two of them in a lift. He scrolled and found twenty or so pictures from the same time. In each one he was draped across Dan. When he reached the last shot in the series he looked at Dan again. “These photos of us on a lift…”

“The night you broke your elbow.”

“Why do you have so many pictures of —“

“It was at your insistence.” Dan playfully lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m afraid you were a bit high on pain killers at the time.”

“Did I…” Kyle glanced at the phone and then back at Dan again. “Did I have your ear in my mouth?”

“You did,” Dan said simply. “You also had some thoughts about how nice my neck was.” Dan could count on one hand how many times he had ever seen Kyle blush in all of the years he’d known him, so it was with some amount of pleasure that he watched Kyle’s face redden. 

“Did we…”

Dan tilted his head as he answered. “No….mostly it was just you becoming acquainted with my neck.”

Kyle covered his face with his hand. “Oh God. I, I sort of remember some of it. I thought maybe I dreamed it. I…. I kissed you, didn’t I?”

“You did.” Dan grinned like a Cheshire Cat even though he knew he was far from out of the woods with Kyle yet. “But you did ask very politely beforehand if it was ok to do so.”

“Right but…” Kyle looked at the picture on his phone of them again. He held it up in Dan’s direction. “But look at you here. You don’t seem to have minded.”

Dan’s grin gentled into something else and he spoke a bit softly. “I didn’t mind.”

“You kissed me back?” Kyle questioned. “In my dream from that night. Or what I thought was a dream — you, you kissed me back.”

“I did.”

“It was real?”

“It was.” Dan paused as he tried to remember to take a breath. His heart was hammering so loudly, he could feel it in his ears. He added, “It still is.”

Kyle blinked and seemed to be at a loss for words. He glanced back down at his phone and scrolled through the rest of the things Dan had texted him. He raised his chin and met Dan’s eyes. “Everything here, everything you sent me… these are all pictures and videos of you and me. This— this is what you wanted to save?”

Dan nodded.”I know what I said at the pub. And I know that we’ve never decided to be… to be together, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not yours. Because Christ, Kyle. It’s all that I am.” Dan shifted on the piano bench and placed his hands on the instrument’s keys. “I’ve been up all night, thinking about all the things we’ve done. And I wrote about all of it. I wrote you a song. Which I’m aware is a ridiculously sappy thing for a person to do, but fuck. You’ve made me a ridiculous sappy person.”

Kyle took some time before he spoke. Finally, he asked “What’s it called? The song, I mean…” 

“Quarter Past Midnight.”

“Will you play it for me now?” 

Dan considered the question. Playing in front of one person was in many ways more difficult than playing for a crowd. But this was Kyle. He trusted Kyle. He had always been able to sing in front of Kyle, knowing that Kyle wouldn’t judge him, that Kyle would just hear him. Dan had gone over countless ideas and lyrics with Kyle, but jesus, the idea of doing a song in front of him that was entirely about him was terrifying. Though when Dan thought about losing Kyle, about Kyle walking away from him, singing to Kyle was the less scary option, by far. “I’ll give it a go,” he said.

Dan felt a tremor in both of his hands as he began the first verse. He tried to ignore his nerves and to focus on getting the words right. He darted his eyes to Kyle and sang the bit about Joy Division, hoping that the line would mean something to Kyle. He watched as the corners of Kyle’s mouth lifted up into a hesitant smile. Dan’s hands stopped shaking and flew over the keys as he continued to the chorus. As he sang about red lights, he watched Kyle’s smile spread across his face. Dan threw his head back and belted out the lyrics, holding nothing back. It felt fucking good to finally say all the things he had stashed away and buried for so long. To put all of it in front of Kyle and see Kyle still sitting there, listening to him. 

Dan slowed and sang softly, “We never knew what we had…. I never know what I’ve had…” The expression on Kyle’s face was almost more than Dan could take. Dan’s eyes grew damp and he had to close them to continue the song. He moved through the final lines and hoped that it was enough. Enough to convince Kyle of the truth. Enough for Kyle to forgive him. Enough to make Kyle stay. 

Dan’s hands stilled as he finished and he opened his eyes just as Kyle stood. It was impossible for Dan to guess what Kyle was thinking and for a moment he wasn’t sure which direction Kyle would take. Instead of turning towards the door, Kyle took the handful of steps to the piano and paused by the bench. Dan watched Kyle, waited and then felt his chest grow light as Kyle smiled and asked, “Yeah?”

Dan nodded. “Yeah. I, I sort of love you.”

Kyle sat down beside him, one leg on either side of the bench. “I sort of feel the same way.”

Dan laughed with a mixture of joy and relief. “I’ve always…” he began but paused as Kyle moved closer and pressed his lips against Dan’s. It felt like a question, as if Kyle was waiting for Dan’s response, his confirmation. Dan immediately answered him. Dan kissed him unabashedly, just as he had sung to Kyle. _Here I am,_ Dan thought. _Yours for the taking._ He felt Kyle’s hand move and settle on his chest which was thudding with such intensity Dan was certain Kyle would be able to feel it. He hoped that it would tell Kyle everything he needed to know. When Kyle returned his kiss, matching his motions, Dan realized that Kyle felt as he did —that they were in this thing together. They were finally in the same place. 

Kyle pulled away first, but didn’t go far, resting his face in the spot where Dan’s neck met his shoulder. He lightly nudged Dan with his nose. “Well. I was right, wasn’t I? Your neck is really nice.”

Dan chuckled and wrapped his arms around Kyle. “So I hear.”

“You know,” Kyle began as he moved his lips against Dan’s neck, “most of the lines of that song are direct quotes of mine. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about the billboard or any of the rest of it. I may need full credits for it.”

Dan dropped his chin to rest on Kyle’s shoulder. “You can have it entirely. It’s your song, after all.”

He felt Kyle grow still as Kyle considered his words. “It’s really beautiful, Dan. I can’t believe you wrote it for me.” 

Dan turned to look at Kyle. “Who else would I write songs about?” 

Kyle’s eyes grew soft and then he beamed. “So this is how it’s going to be? You’re just going to rework all my lines, all of my best bits?” He playfully shoved Dan. 

Dan reached forward and grabbed a handful of Kyle’s t-shirt and tugged him closer. He kissed Kyle and smiled as he felt Kyle press back against him. “Yes,” Dan replied. “This is how it’s always going to be.”

_end._

**Author's Note:**

> [QPM](https://youtu.be/cvE_sxKQQ28)
> 
> Thanks to everyone who helped along the way.


End file.
